Skip to main content

 

Next, I want to look at the Exodus. But before I get into the story of how God delivered His people after 400 years of slavery, read Exodus 6:6-9 below.

““Therefore, say to the people of Israel: ‘I am the Lord. I will free you from your oppression and will rescue you from your slavery in Egypt. I will redeem you with a powerful arm and great acts of judgment. 7 I will claim you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God who has freed you from your oppression in Egypt. 8 I will bring you into the land I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will give it to you as your very own possession. I am the Lord!’ So, Moses told the people of Israel what the Lord had said, but they refused to listen anymore. They had become too discouraged by the brutality of their slavery.’”

God was promising to fulfill His promise to Abraham and to bless the Israelites beyond their imagination. The Israelites refused to listen, refused to believe because they had become too discouraged by the sheer brutality of their slavery. They had heart, that what discouragement means, so even the sure promises of God fell on unwilling ears.

Some of us…if not all of us…have battled against things that never seem to go away. Maybe wounds inflicted through betrayal, abandonment or even indifference still flare up at anything that remotely resembles the wounding moment. Satan whispers using the voice of our own thoughts, “God doesn’t really care…it’s been so long…you can’t get free…you can’t face it…do so and people will reject you even more.”

That lie insinuates that there are things God can’t set you free from. That is similar to the lie the enemy told Adam and Eve. “God is not enough for you to be fully human.” BUT…when it seems that it has been so long for an area to be set free, we need to take great care, to beware lest we give us and stop seeking, listening to and following what God has already said to us. Never forget in the momentary darkness what God has revealed to you in the light.

Difficulty and long, drawn-out waiting never nullify God’s covenant promises. 400 years of slavery had to have felt endless to Israel. But in Genesis 15:16 God tells Abraham that He was giving a pagan, idolatrous people, the Amorites, time to repent before He set His people free. The patience of God with the godless was 400 years immense.

God give us all time to turn from self and rely on His faithfulness. His sure promises have become “YES” in Jesus Christ. Don’t refuse to listen to God’s Word to you because things seem hard and endless; because things aren’t going the way you had hoped they might.

I suspect, no, I am sure that there are things in my life that I will struggle with till I meet Jesus face-to-face. But, like Jacob who limped the rest of his life after wrestling with God, that pain in the hip reminded him daily of his absolute dependance on the One Who had called him into covenant.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 INFINITELY MORE Ephesians 3:20-21 " Now all glory to God, Who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.   Glory to Him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen." In the Gospel of John, many of His followers turned away because of the covenant commitment He required of those who would follow Him. That covenant declared that what was to happen to Jesus would also happen to them. We, too, must lay our lives down and choose the will and way of God's Kingdom over all else. Those in the crowd knew that in Jerusalem, the Jewish religious leaders were plotting and planning Jesus' destruction. To follow Jesus to that degree required denying self and the thrall of the world and its ways, even to the point of laying one's life down by refusing to deny the Lord and His salvation. Jesus turned to the 12 and asked, " Are you also going to leave?" ( John 6:67-...
Post a Comment
Read more
WHAT DO YOU BLESS? It would be an act of utter folly and disaster were I to choose to "bless" what God will not bless. God's wrath is set against anything and anyone that would try and hinder you becoming all He created you to be and to grow in by being united to Him through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is nothing arbitrary about the Word of God. He is very specific on what will make for life and what will not. Human life only becomes human life when the Holy Spirit becomes Life withing a believer. Being united to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the follower of Jesus becomes a new creation and begins to live Life as God intended. God begins the good work, and He is the One who will bring it to competition. Somethings will NEVER make for life. What God calls sin, missing the mark of what will make for life, is always sin regardless of what culture anywhere and anytime say to the contrary. Sin cannot save, heal, redeem, restore or remake...
Post a Comment
Read more
BEWARE DECEPTION   Deuteronomy 18:9 “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, be very careful not to imitate the detestable customs of the nations living there. Deuteronomy 12:29-30 “When the Lord your God goes ahead of you and destroys the nations and you drive them out and live in their land, do not fall into the trap of following their customs and worshiping their gods. Do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations worship their gods? I want to follow their example.’ Pragmatics was the downfall of Israel when they took possession of the Promised Land. To the unredeemed eye, it seemed that the fertility gods and agricultural gods of the pagan nations actually were helping the indigenous peoples. Just because something works does not make it right or good.  God promised to prosper His people if they would trust Him to the point of obeying His Word. God's Word is not empty. When He directs and commands, it is always for...
Post a Comment
Read more